Kind of a hairy traverse from Starlight. We stayed mainly within 60-80 feet of the ridge with several exposed Class 5 moves along the way. Reached the summit at 4:30 in time to rappel down the U notch.

Day 5 of the 2002 Mountaineers Challenge. From South Lake, climbed Southwest Chute #1 to Thunderbolt, traversed to Starlight - North Pal - Polemonium, down the Southwest Chute from the U-Notch, then back to South Lake. 14hrs CTC. Trip Report.

Traversed from Thunderbolt to Starlight to N.Pal to Polemonium to Sill with bearbnz. We freeclimbed most of the route, with three rappels and three belayed (probably unneccesary) pitches total. Heavy packs and little route knowledge (Secor's book only) made for slow time --- OK, maybe lack of fitness contributed! Left the car around 530, summited Thunderbolt around 1100, summited Sill at 2130. Waited for daylight to decend an east couloir of Sill and walk down to the S. Fork Trail. Got to the car at 1330 on Aug. 18 and drove home to get some sleep.

Jesus Malverde, Wally Longridge and I left camp near Sam Mack @ 4:30 am, topped out at 4pm and got back to camp at 3am. Perfect conditons, 'schrund was bridged with snow. We were moving pretty constantly, how come we were so dam slow?

Camped below Thunderbolt pass. Getting from Bishop pass to Thunderbolt pass is hateful with an overnight pack. Camping below the pass is choice. The coulior wasn't difficult, a little gravelly, but OK. The catwalk wasn't too hard to find either. We roped up on the way up for the catwalk, but soloed it on the way back. The exposure here is great, but it's actually pretty wide and flat. Couple nasty narrow points in the coulior kept us awake, then, the summit bowl. After endless wandering over big summit blocks, we finally bumped into the summit. We had fat plans to bag T-bolt and Starlight that day as well, but ended up just rapping off. Guess we have another trip in the future....

Climbed this with mconnell. I thought the hardest climbing was the bypassing of the bergschrund on the right side. I wished I had my climbing shoes while I stood in the open book there, desperately looking to place a piece of pro before I slipped off.

We also attempted to descend the class 4 Clyde Variation back to the U-Notch. Eventually we had to admit we couldn't downclimb class 4 or we were off-route, so we ended up rappelling the last 20m down.

Single day solo traverse of Thunderbolt, Starlight, North Palisade and Polemonium. Started at the parking lot at 5:30am....didn't get back until 9:30. Hauled a 30lb pack full of snow/ice gear all day. That sucked big time on the 5th class rock sections. The traverse from Starlight involves some tricky routefinding. If you rope up and place pro, the traverse will take forever. Better to free solo, but beware of loose rock!

Climbed North Palisade via the U-Notch+Chimney Variation on May 7th, 2001. Apparently we were the first to sign the summit log since October of 2000. The snow was firm in the U Notch, and skiers has kicked in steps all the way, making the ascent easy. The chimney above it is class 4 with some easy class 5 moves on the second pitch. The traverse of the arete to the summit was actually the tricky part because many ledges were covered in snow at that time of year (hard class 3 probably). A long and strenuous day, and a gorgeous climb....